


we are motherless sons (but they share our empty spaces)

by CallMeBombshell



Series: our pieces all fit (though they come from different boxes) [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallMeBombshell/pseuds/CallMeBombshell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things Derek ponders while he walks up the neat gravel paths between headstones, winding his way slowly towards the back corner where the Hales have their plots. There’s an empty space there for him, someday, one of half a dozen left in the space the family had bought two generations before, back when they’d first decided to make Beacon Hills their home. Derek tries not to think about that plot, the empty bit of grass where he’ll be buried someday, if anyone even bothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are motherless sons (but they share our empty spaces)

Derek hasn’t visited the cemetery since he’s been back. But something about the idea of coming here and starting down at the names of his parents, his sister, his uncles and aunts and cousins, all dead because of him and his foolish naivete...it turns his stomach to even think of it.  
  
He’s been getting better, mostly, about being able to think about it without feeling the crushing weight on his shoulders, his own guilt bearing him to his knees in the dirt. Having his new pack around had helped some, but it hadn’t been enough. Not when he hadn’t been enough, too broken and too new and too untrained to be of any real use as an alpha, as a leader.  
  
It got somehow easier, he thinks, when Erica and Boyd left. The irony of that is painful, his failure slammed in his face in the most literal way possible, making it difficult to keep himself in denial about his abilities to be the alpha they needed. He’s been looking for them, sometimes with Isaac’s help, or, more rarely, Scott’s, but their trail has gone cold. He and the others had spent too long dealing with the events in the warehouse and by the time they’d gotten to the woods the trail had been muddled. Any trace has vanished altogether by now, too much time and too many other people in the woods since the night they vanished. Chris Argent swears he let them go, and Derek believes him for once, but neither of them has seen hide nor hair of either of them since.  
  
Isaac still comes to Derek for training and for answers to his questions, and he still comes to the depot after school most days. He spends his time with Scott most days, now, and yet Derek can’t quite bring himself to feel jealous or betrayed that his one remaining beta appears to have two alphas. The truth of it is that Isaac looks more comfortable these days, his muscles less tense and his expression looser. He looks like a normal kid, instead of the too-tough man he’d been pretending to be.  
  
Jackson keeps his distance, but whether out of anger or disdain for Derek, or out of fear of the fallout should people realise he’s still alive, Derek isn’t sure. Lydia stays with him, and Derek finds himself glad of it; he’s not sure what to make of her, to be honest. He knows that Scott thinks she’s conceited and cold and that Stiles thinks she hangs the moon, despite her obvious love for Jackson. Derek doesn’t honestly know anything about her, to be truthful, except that she’s intelligent and immune to the bite and that Peter had somehow used the latter to bring himself back to life. But Derek’s mostly trying not to think about that, for now.  
  
He tries not to think about Peter at all, if he can help it. There’s too much tied and twisted up in that, betrayal and anger and vengeance coming up against guilt and atonement and too many memories. It’s a tangled mess of conflicting emotions, the instinct to stay with pack and family warring with the instinct to run from danger and deceit. Derek’s not stupid enough to believe that Peter came back for anything less than revenge, and he’s not foolish enough to believe that Peter doesn’t have some sort of plan, some end game that he’s working towards.  
  
Derek can still remember how Peter used to be, smiling and sarcastic and funny. He’d been Derek’s favourite relative, once, other than Laura. Peter had been the one Derek talked to about school, about books, about the legends and the myths that Derek found, the two of them sitting together on the couch and laughing at the inaccuracies and ridiculousness of Hollywood werewolves. It’s hard to reconcile that Peter with this one, sharp and cold like a knife, his mind just as sharp without the undercurrent of warmth it used to have.  
  
Derek still isn’t sure how Peter managed to come back, and he’s not entirely sure he even wants to ask. Peter makes jokes about it constantly, about his resurrection, and he doesn’t seem to mind the way Stiles has taken to calling him Zombiewolf (though largely under his breath so he can pretend Peter can’t hear him).  
  
If he’s honest with himself, Stiles’ jokes are part of what’s letting Derek remain steady. The others all tend to tiptoe around Peter, wary and hesitant as though they’re hoping that he’ll just disappear if they can manage to ignore him. Stiles, though, faces Peter head on anytimes they’re in the same room, never turning his back even for a moment. There’s a hardness in his eyes when he looks at Peter, a sort of determination that wars with the fear Derek can hear in the too-fast pounding of Stiles’ heart in his chest.  
  
Derek’s found himself listening for that rapid beat when they’re in the same room. It settles something inside him, somehow, to know that he’s not the only one who’s afraid. Because Stiles is afraid, and there’s something about the careful, deliberate distance he keeps from Peter, the way he rubs at his right wrist like a reflex, a strange tic that Derek’s sure he didn’t have before, that bothers Derek. Stiles is still on guard constantly, watching for any hint that Peter is up to something. It’s a kind of vigilance that Derek appreciates, if only because it means he’s not the only one.  
  
These are the things Derek ponders while he walks up the neat gravel paths between headstones, winding his way slowly towards the back corner where the Hales have their plots. There’s an empty space there for him, someday, one of half a dozen left in the space the family had bought two generations before, back when they’d first decided to make Beacon Hills their home. Derek tries not to think about that plot, the empty bit of grass where he’ll be buried someday, if anyone even bothers. The last of his family, he thinks, and less and less likely every day to die with dignity or have anyone left to mourn him. There won’t be any Hales after him.  
  
Derek nearly stops on the path just before the turn that would lead him to the two rows of graves, seven neat granite headstones lined up four on the left, three on the right. The three are smaller, the graves of his cousins, all younger than him when they were killed. He isn’t certain he can bear to look at them.  
  
He makes himself draw near anyway, steps staggering and uneven as he walks up the left side, hand stretched out to graze the tops of the four stones as he goes. They’re cool to the touch, shaded by the trees behind them, not yet exposed enough for the morning sun to soak into the stone. He crosses to the other side of the path, touching the stones as he goes, stopping before the last stone in the row.  
  
His parents’ names stare up at him, ivy engraved along the edges in subtle, elegant knotwork, trailing off into spirals at the corners. The stone is wide, centered over both of their graves, side-by-side. Derek has a vague memory of standing here, more than six years ago, staring down at these stones with Laura’s hand caught in his, his throat tight and his eyes red and aching but dry.  
  
Laura isn’t buried here. The wrongness of it tugs at him even as he’s glad, because he still isn’t ready to think about laying flowers at her grave. Her body was confiscated by the police and later cremated. They’d offered him the ashes, but he’d turned them down. His house was already full of them; he didn’t need any more.  
  
There’s a bouquet in his hands, yellow roses against the white points of asphodel and star-of-bethlehem, and he bends to lay it on the neatly-mowed grass on front of his mother’s headstone. He crouches down, head bowed for a moment, and just sits with his eyes closed, listening to the sound of birds in the trees above him, the distant crunch of a car pulling up in the gravel parking lot on the far side of the cemetery.  
  
He feels like he should say something, but Derek’s never been great at saying the things he really means, and he’s only gotten worse in the last few years. He can feels the words like splinters underneath his skin, digging in, painful and sharp, but when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He can feel the guilt coiling in his stomach, the same vaguely dirty feeling that kept him from ever telling them about Kate. Even in his head, her name feels like it’s burning him, and he feels choked, shame and anger burning hot in his chest even after all these years.  
  
He wants to tell them about everything that’s happened. About Peter and Laura, about Scott getting bitten, about Stiles and Jackson and Lydia. He wants to talk about the pack, about how he’s been struggling with his new responsibilities and abilities as an alpha. He wants to ask for their advice, hear his father’s deep voice in his ear, feel his mother’s hands on his shoulders.  
  
But it’s just him, alone, sitting beside their grave in silence, the pounding of his own heart echoing in his ears.  
  
He’s not sure how long he sits there, but it doesn’t matter. It’s mid-morning and a weekday; people are at work or in school, and there’s no one nearby. He has nothing to do for now, no leads, no new information on his missing betas, and no current threats to act on. For once, he’s got time to just sit and listen.  
  
It’s peaceful in a way he so rarely feels these days, when even quiet moments are generally dogged by the broken record of his thoughts, cycling through _guiltangerfailure_ over and over again. His head is quiet now, though, the din pushed back until he can barely hear it, and he feels like he can breathe without choking on ash and dust and dirt.  
  
  


\---

  
  
When he opens his eyes again the shadows have shifted, the sun beginning to creep across the granite of his family’s graves. Derek stands eventually, brushing dirt from his jeans and looking around. He can hear a few people walking elsewhere in the grounds, but his corner remains still and silent. With a final long glance at the graves around him, he turns away, walking back down the path the way he came.  
  
Hoping to prolong the unaccustomed peacefulness, he lets himself look now, pausing every now and then to examine a particular engraving, a strange name, an interesting headstone. There’s one shaped like an angel in white marble, another carved with books and a professor’s name across the top, another done in black stone and painted with gold.  
  
He’s peering at a headstone with a beautiful carving of a bunch of lilies when he spies a familiar name. It’s back a row, behind a rather ugly pink granite slab. Derek steps closer to take a look. The headstone is made of fine, grey rock, rounded, with a design of a cluster of stars at the top, right over the inscription.  
  


_Yelena Volkov Stilinski  
Loving mother and beloved wife  
You were the brightest spark in our lives_

  
Derek reaches out a hesitant hand to run his fingers over the carved letters. He knew, of course, that Stiles’ mother was dead, that she’d died when he was still just a kid. Stiles never said as much, but there were hints all over the place: the way he never talked about her; the photos in his room, half tucked away as though he couldn’t quite bear to look at them; his fierce dedication to protecting his father at any cost.  
  
Derek had never really thought about it before. He’d been too caught up in his own grief; it had never occurred to him that others in his little ragtag circle might not be strangers to that kind of loss. But now he thinks about Stiles’ mother; Scott’s dad is gone, somewhere, but not dead; Isaac is an orphan now.  
  
And there are other losses. As far as he knows, both Erica and Boyd have their parents still, but he’s not sure how much time they’ve spent with them lately. Jackson is caught up in his insecurities about being adopted (and Derek has never been more relieved that Jackson has Lydia for that, that Derek isn’t going to have to be the one to try to work him through them), and although he still has his parents, he isn’t talking to them.  
  
Derek stares at the stone for a moment, reading the inscription again. He’s struck by a sudden impulse and he chews on his lip, debating with himself. Then he turns, walking quickly back to his parents’ graves.  
  
He kneels down, carefully pulling a few flowers away from the bouquet he’d left, a single rose and a few sprays of the smaller white flowers. He turns away, walking back to Stiles’ mother’s grave. Kneeling again, he sets the flowers down gently in front of it, tucked against the stone. The yellow is bright against the grey.  
  
There are words building in his throat, but Derek still can’t quite bring himself to voice them. He’s not sure what he’d say, anyway. He’d remembered Stiles’s dad, of course, even before he came back to Beacon Hills. He’d remembered the sheriff with the kind voice and sad eyes who’d talked to him at the police station when he was sixteen. But Derek had never met the sheriff’s wife, Stiles’ mother. He can remember hearing her name, maybe, somewhere in town years ago, but that’s about it.  
  
He’s not sure why he felt the need to leave flowers at her grave, or why he feels now like he should say something to her.  
  
He wants to apologise, somehow, for everything that’s happened to her son. For Peter and Scott, the murders and the craziness that Stiles couldn’t stay away from. He wants to apologise for all the times Scott could have killed Stiles, and for not being able to teach Scott to control himself sooner. He wants to apologise for the way Stiles has grown more serious with every passing month, the way his smiles have become rarer and his jokes sharper. He wants to apologise for the way Stiles’ voice broke the few times he mentioned his father in recent weeks.  
  
He wants to apologise for needing Stiles to save his life, first with the bullet and then in the pool, and again just last week, Derek bleeding out slowly on her kitchen floor while her husband watched their son patch him up with nothing more than his own hands and some magic flowers. He wants to apologise for getting him involved as well.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. His voice is rough and he coughs, trying to clear his suddenly-tight throat. “Getting your son involved wasn’t my fault, but I should have done something. I should have done more to make him stay away. He chose to be part of this, but I still should have protected him.”  
  
Derek sits back, resting his arms across his drawn-up knees and tilts his head back, staring at the sky. “People pity me,” he says quietly, “because I lost my whole family. I’m the only one left anymore. But that’s not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Maybe you know that. Maybe you’re somewhere with my family, watching everything that happens, agonizing that you’re unable to help. I don’t know.”  
  
He lowers his head, looking down at his hands. “People think I’m the one who’s suffered the worst. But they don’t get it. I lost everything. Everyone I ever knew, everyone I ever cared about. Gone. But the thing about losing everyone is that it can only happen once.”  
  
Derek pauses, drawing in a deep, shaky breath. The breeze picks up slightly and he closes his eyes to breath in the fresh air and the scent of grass and dirt and slowly-dying flowers. It still hurts to talk about it, still makes something deep inside his chest burn, like a hot wire twisting around his ribs and down into his stomach. But it’s faded somehow, right now, the urgency and the sharpness of it dulled for the moment.  
  
“I lost my entire world,” Derek continues addressing the headstone. “But there are worse things.” Derek swallows, throat suddenly tight and eyes suddenly wet as he finishes, “Because the only thing worse than losing your whole world is only losing half of it, and then having to spend the rest of your life terrified of losing the rest. Stiles doesn’t deserve that kind of pain. But he has to feel it anyway. And I wish that wasn’t the case.”  
  
Derek falls silent again. He sits with his head bowed and his eyes closed, listening to the chirping of birds and the rustle of leaves in the wind. If he tries, he can hear the cars on the road that borders the far end of the cemetery.  
  
Derek sits in front of Yelena Stilinski’s grave and loses himself in the sounds around him and just breathes.  
  
  


\---

  
  
Eventually Derek comes back to himself, shaking his head slightly as he opens his eyes. The sun has shifted slightly, now beginning to peek over the face of Yelena’s grave. The breeze has risen, bringing with it the sound of a lawnmower and the smell of fresh-cut grass.  
  
Derek stands, wincing as his legs protest from being bent for so long. The ache will be gone quickly enough, his accelerated healing easing his muscles faster than if he was human, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt for the moment. There’s a metaphor buried there somewhere, he thinks absently, but he’s never been one for poetry and he doesn’t feel like trying to parse it out. He stretches, looking down at Yelena’s grave again before turning his head and gazing back towards his family’s graves one more time.  
  
He takes a deep breath and turns, making his way back to the main path leading towards the parking lot, hands in his pockets as he walks.  
  
The Camero is parked at the far end of the parking lot, hidden behind the caretaker’s small office and underneath a couple of large trees. Walking towards it, Derek spares a moment to be thankful that he’d thought to park out of the way where no one was likely to spot him. He’s just fished out his keys when he hears the crunch of tires and the low rumble of the engine as the Jeep pulls into the parking lot. Derek pulls back into the shadow of the trees.  
  
Derek watches as Stiles parks neatly before flinging his door open and sliding out. His father follows on the other side, a bouquet held in one hand, pink carnations and red tulips and light pink roses. The breeze carries the scent over to Derek, mild and sweet. The sheriff waits while Stiles locks up the Jeep, and then they both turn, walking off down the path towards Yelena Stilinski’s grave.  
  
Derek watches them go for a moment, feeling a slight smile tugging at his lips, imagining the look on Stiles’ face when he sees that someone else has already brought her flowers today. He shakes his head as he gets into the Camaro and wonders if Stiles will think to wander over and look for flowers at the Hale family’s graves.

**Author's Note:**

> Just for kicks, I decided on Volkov for Stiles' mother's maiden name, because it comes from the Russian "volk" meaning "wolf".
> 
> The flowers mentioned all have specific meanings:
> 
> [yellow rose](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.animalpicturestockphoto.com%2Fpictures-of-flowers-South-Africa%2Fyellow_rose_4897.jpg&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHwlCMdY7m_G8KPsJbXPsZkM_YqKQ): apology, broken heart, extreme betrayal  
> [asphodel](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnelkington.com%2Fimages%2Fmar-05%2FAspodel.jpg&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNE3rUNxKERF9jbYXutC6LgK3xjy2g): “my regrets follow you to the grave”  
> [star of bethlehem](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm4.static.flickr.com%2F3275%2F2406806492_3c944faa75.jpg&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNF2_fxTqs8S8Zb1hWsOhqcm-y-hlw): atonement, reconciliation
> 
> [pink carnation](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wallcoo.net%2Fflower%2Fcarnation_flowers_mothers_day%2Fimages%2FCarnation_flower_photo_4.jpg&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHV_2Jgkplz8UkhEbBepApRtgG2xg): a mother’s love, “I’ll never forget you”, “you’re always on my mind”  
> [red tulip](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wildnatureimages.com%2FI%2520to%2520R%2FRED-TULIP..jpg&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHuEu6BPQnBoFTgq8sA3FO9dENyAQ): undying love  
> [light pink rose](http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.polyvore.com%2Fcgi%2Fimg-thing%3F.out%3Djpg%26size%3Dl%26tid%3D10493633&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNE1kItGbVsdofejlHZy50hir5SusQ): desire, passion, joy of life, youth, energy


End file.
